1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital photography and, more particularly, to creating digital image files.
2. Description of Related Art
The popularity of digital photography has grown significantly over recent years. As a general matter, digital photography is very similar to conventional film-based photography, except that photographs taken with a digital camera are stored as digital files rather than being recorded on film. Digital photography thereby provides users with immediate access to photographs without the need for film developing.
Typically, a digital camera will receive and resolve light into an array of pixels that cooperatively represent an image, and the camera will produce digital representations of each pixel, reflecting image characteristics such as color and intensity. The camera will then store the digital pixel representation (or other digital representation of the image) in a digital image file, usually on a removable storage medium such as a Flash memory card, for instance. Additionally, a camera may insert into the digital image file a date and time stamp of when the image was created.
Most digital cameras further include an LCD display screen that a user can employ as a viewfinder and to selectively view stored images. Further, a user can typically transfer images from a digital camera onto a personal computer, for viewing, emailing, storing, editing, and printing, through a cable connection between the camera and computer, or by removing a memory card from the camera and coupling the card to the computer.
Recently, digital camera technology has been integrated into wireless communication devices such as cellular telephones. A combined digital camera and a cellular telephone, known as a “camera phone,” allows for both capturing images and convenient wireless transmission of the images over a data network to a remote server.
Provided with the ability to capture and instantly view and manipulate digital images, users of digital cameras build large collections of digital image files. Often, a user will store those files on a computer hard drive or other personal storage device. Alternatively, a user may upload the files to a network server (e.g., a web server) for centralized storage and convenient access.
Additionally, users may want to print some or all of their digital images, in order to share hard copies of the images (photographs) with family and friends, or to store the photographs in photo albums. Several mechanisms exist for printing hard copies of digital images.
As an example, a user could transfer image files from a digital camera to a personal computer and then print the images on a personal photo printer connected to the computer. As another example, a user could bring the image files on a digital storage medium (e.g., a Flash memory card) to a brick-and-mortar photo processing lab and order prints in a manner similar to how a user would normally order photographs to be printed from film.
As still another example, a user could upload the image files to an online photo processing lab. With the widespread popularity of the Internet and data communications, many such services have recently become available. In practice, a user would establish an account with an online photo processing service provider, and the user would then upload digital image files to the service provider and instruct the service provider to print the images. The service provider would then print the images and ship them to the user.